Chapter 6
6.
Maybe there’s a version of me who doesn’t click on the ad at all. A version who rolls her eyes, picks up her guitar, forgets about some stupid night that happened nearly a year ago, finishes one of her own goddamn songs. A version of me that is wiser, less masochistic. Another girl—someone like Sloane or Jessika, maybe. She would shut the computer, turn off Almost Famous, and walk the fuck away. At least at first.
But maybe, at the end of the day, we’re all the same. None of us really that noble about our pasts. Maybe we’d all click eventually.
Nick’s face at the bottom of my screen:
Flirtation Device: May 12th. Saturday Night Live.
In the photo, he’s wearing makeup. He’s dressed in a dark green velvet suit, with Timmy and John behind him, smaller and spiraling, looking like they’re circling some kind of kaleidoscopic drain. I pick up my phone to text him, then set it down again and turn it off. I didn’t plan on drinking today, but now I plan on drinking today.
Some cursory research: the host that night will be a B-list actor. A bit of air releases from my lungs then. At least Nick won’t be spending the evening with Justin Timberlake or Steve Martin or Emma Stone. Still. Fuck fame and all its stupid fucking layers. I pour myself a screwdriver and get in the bath.
I know that most of the bands will go nowhere, be forgotten for longer than they are remembered. I know that venues will close and be turned into condos. I know that songwriting can be cheap, formulaic, just a big machine. I know that fame and buzz will fade, even though I forget this every single night, every time I meet someone who has either. I know that a placement on a TV show or a slot on a tour can mean everything, it can mean nothing, it can mean everything before it means nothing. I know that sometimes it’s not all that sexy, that sometimes it’s just a job, a paycheck, a way to feed a family. And I know the saddest truth—that my job is not even really a job, not a path or a career or a career path. I always thought that at least I was on par with the guys—I know some of them; everybody knows some of them—who don’t even get their own name in their email addresses, who are just somebody else’s assistant, somebody else’s tour manager, lights guy, session drummer, road photographer, stylist, backup singer, sound guy, day-to-day manager. But I don’t even have an email address for my job at The Venue.
It’s late and the last band is finally loaded out. I have been drinking, more or less, ever since I found out about SNL this morning. Rainwater shimmers off the back staircase railing, the air is a blanket of damp cement. Julien is smoking a cigarette, the tip of it burning orange, out on the back balcony. His hood up, his shoulders slightly hunched into the breeze. The city is dim and quiet above him, construction cranes elbowing each other for airspace across the river, condos going in next to car washes and body shops.
Colt’s running receipts in the back. Andy’s gone home. Eddie’s on his fourth Mich Ultra, talking loudly with the bass player at the bar even though the guy has his coat on—he’s clearly ready to go. Jessika is emailing me from work about places that have open mics next month. I’m ignoring her. I go out for a cigarette as one of Nick’s songs comes on over the house music. I try to let it fade into the space, the door shutting with a satisfying, silencing click. Just like that: Nick’s voice gone, Julien’s face beneath the skyline, his cigarette shrinking between his fingers.
—You’re still here? he asks.
—Can I bum one? I wanted to get the rest of the guys loaded out.
Julien gives me a look. Eyes wide with a joke or a judgment or a question. He knows I’ve been drinking during my shift, but he hasn’t said anything yet.
—They’re better than I thought they would be, though.
—Much, Julien says. The second half of the set had more energy than the first, but still.
—Would be cool to see them stripped down.
He laughs.
—Hear. To hear them stripped down. Acoustic.
But Julien’s already gone, back of his hand covering his grin, laughter spilling out too quickly. Something thick in the air breaks loose, and he passes me a cigarette. In the parking lot, Colt’s walking to his car now, unlocking the door to an old Bronco. The night is quiet again, mist spritzing us like we’re catching spray off the ocean.
—Do you want to do something? I ask.
Julien’s looking at me, his cigarette going out. His face looks briefly pained, and then—blank.
—It’s almost one, he says.
—So?
—I don’t know.
—Okay. Never mind.
—Haven’t you already had a drink?
—Okay. I said never mind.
Downtown a streetlight flickers, casting a golden haze above the few cars left in the lot. The rain is starting to turn to ice, to snow.
—I’m not trying to be a dick, he says.
—It’s fine, I say. You wanted to hang out last week, and this week you don’t.
—It’s not about wanting to or not wanting to, he says. I just—I don’t really know if I should.
—Okay.
—I guess I just don’t know what this is, he says.
—Do you want there to be a this? I ask.
Julien looks away.
—Al, you don’t know what you want.
—That’s not an answer, I say.
The only thing you can hear for a moment is the two of us breathing, Julien’s long, protracted exhale before he says:
—You don’t want me.
—That’s not true.
The corners of my eyes, watering.
—Tonight you want me. Tonight you want me because—I don’t know, for whatever reason, you want me. You’re bored, or—probably you’re bored. But tomorrow you won’t be, and then next week you will again. So I don’t know. It’s more like you just don’t want anyone else to have me.
Colt honks his horn at us obnoxiously as he pulls away, waving at us out of his window. Julien looks exhausted.
—I just—I don’t think you want me. You just want anyone, he says.
—What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
In his black hoodie and jeans he looks like the shadow of a parenthesis, bent into the breeze, the light snow pricking the cotton of his sweatshirt.
—I mean you don’t like me. You just—
—Actually I do, I say. Like you.
—And I like you, he says. But his face is horrible, grimacing, his lips dry and flaky. I wipe my nose as it starts to run in the cold.
—I just think that whatever this is—I don’t know what it is, but I can’t really do it.
For a moment, the air in the whole city seems sucked up. My cigarette burns into my fingertips, the pain runs from my fingers up through my palm, my wrist. A siren wails down Eighth. Traffic lights on Fifth flash yellow, like smoldering little cigarette butts tossed away on the ground.
—We’re not doing anything, I say, standing up straighter. We’re friends.
—You’re right, he says. We’re friends.
It’s full-on snowing now, big dusty flakes melting on the tops of Julien’s ears, dissolving on his cheekbones. He looks like he’s in physical pain, his face twisted up, his pale lips tight and closed. Up above us, the moon shifting, settling behind a cloud. Another show night crossed off the calendar.
When it snows, the city is silent.
Schools close first, then small businesses and yoga studios, restaurants and hole-in-the-wall bars. Hair salons and vintage stores. Because there’s a layer of ice beneath the snow, electrical lines are crippled down Eighth, all over the East Side. The Venue closes for six days. Even though I know theoretically that the days are getting longer, they still seem hopelessly short. One day I wake up and the sun is already setting. I don’t speak to Julien for a week.
The cold cracks through the windows. Nobody drives anywhere for days. Streets stay a pristine, blinding white. The city is anesthetized and I am right there with it.
By day four, almost nothing has melted, but nobody cares. It is no longer cozy, now merely inconvenient. People start partying at the places that have managed to open, but the only one I can get to is the Villager. Sloane makes chili, makes chicken, makes chicken and dumplings, beef bourguignon. She pours me wine and I drink it until it tastes like nothing. Every time she sees me reach for my phone—Julien, Nick, does it even matter?—she takes it from me and insists we turn on a record instead. I tromp through the snow almost a full mile to the Villager to drink the same beer I have at home.
Pilled jersey sheets I’ve had since sophomore year, my sweat caked into them. A juice glass half-full of bourbon in the empty space next to me on the bed. A cotton film of ennui wrapped around my brain, the whole world echoing in lo fi. I can get myself out of bed some days, but it’s late. It’s closer to afternoon, the corn-yellow sun always a little too brutal. I work nights, which is a good, reasonable, valid excuse for sleeping late, but I’m off today, and it’s still harder than it should be. I watch the Justin Wilson performance from the awards show. Once, twice, sixteen times. I read through Esther’s lyrics online, then watch the video again. I listen to sad music and it makes me feel sadder before I feel better. I slip Valium under my tongue, watch the snow refuse to melt out the window, the pill starting to blunt all the raw edges of any hangover.
The only thing I write all week:
I hate Halloween / I just call it like I see it
But I’d come to any party that you wanted me to be at
The only reason I even decide to trek out to some bar in the suburbs, the night after the snow finally starts to melt, is that Colt texts me that Ben Folds is there. Vodka over ice, a splash of orange juice. A text from Colt: grab me a pack of American Spirits on your way? I crumble up half of one of his Valiums and dissolve it into my drink with an odd mix of hesitation and glee.
My shitty Civic is freezing. The Justin Wilson demos play from my speakers as I pull out of the driveway, palms frozen on the wheel. Black, shimmery streets. The snow has turned to rain, and it sputters down unconvincingly. The main streets are cleared, finally, but the back roads are still slush, black ice. A couple crosses the street on Gilmore, holding hands, looking into my headlights. They’re both in all black, like they don’t want people to see them—which I don’t, until the very last second, my stomach sinking into my shins as I skid to a terrifying stop a few yards before I hit them. The man looks directly into my eyes and flicks me off.
I slowly let my foot off the brake as they cross to the sidewalk. All the surfaces outside the car—the road ahead and hoods of other cars, street signs and lampposts—are still reflecting glassy black light. Fogged-up windshield, puddles of gray. The road is a misty, pixelated black. Bright headlights stream toward me as I turn back behind the main four-lane road. I become very aware of my vision, of the swaths and gaps in it, the fact that it’s no longer clear that I’m driving on a road at all. This, of course, is my first mistake: thinking that I’m no longer on the road. Thinking, as I often do, that I’m already elsewhere. The second is closing my eyes. It seems obvious, of course, that you’re supposed to keep your eyes open while driving. It’s kind of a prerequisite.
My third mistake is not giving in when I see the animal leap across my field of vision, a rush of beige, gray, pearl, and then: crimson. The thud like a heavy instrument case landing on the curb.
There is, in any moment like this, the panic of the body. The feeling of limbs and sensations, trying to determine what is intact or harmed or broken. There is the head-to-toe scan of pain, the body’s instinct to identify it and soothe it. And then there is the mind, the deluge of thoughts, the cascade of what has already happened and what could happen and what needs to be done.
A better, more sober person would have known that you’re not supposed to swerve. You’re not supposed to avoid the animal, you’re supposed to give in, welcome the deer into the vehicle, but of course I don’t, because instinct is overpowering, and I swerve off to the right, still hitting the deer, watching the blood slide across my windshield like a morbid car wash, and when the car crashes at the end of its descent, my drink is spilled and the car smells like vodka and the front of the Civic is so smashed and bloody that it looks like I’ve tried to massacre an animal much, much larger than a deer.
My car has landed in a rather large ditch, on a street that snakes behind a neighborhood of expensive houses and a glass-recycling center. In the ditch, though, none of that is visible. I’m under a blanket of darkness, a stage before the band comes out.
A few of the fingers on my right hand feel like they’ve been jammed. My cheekbone aches. And even though the airbag has deployed—delivering its own shock to my system—the rest of my body seems to be in one functional piece. The smell of the drink rushes toward me from the passenger seat, where it has spilled, and the familiar chill of nausea washes over me. I wait. The sirens, the arrest, the quick and deserved dismantling of my life in consequence for my poor choices. I am not drunk—I don’t feel drunk—but legally I would probably qualify.
The night is quiet. Perhaps no one saw me hit the deer. Surely, though, someone must have heard. Surely beyond the ditch some Good Samaritan with a cell phone is standing out in the cold, calling an ambulance or the police or whoever it is you’re supposed to call when you hit a deer.
My eyes cast around the interior of the car. In the console, I spot an ancient to-go coffee that surprisingly did not spill. It must be weeks—months?—old. I pick it up and pour it over the passenger seat. Then I toss the empty cup down onto the floor. Black coffee, blacker night.
Outside the car: putrid air, the deer out of sight. All that blood on the windshield, though—and on the bumper, the hood of the car, the headlights. The animal can’t be alive. The whole scene has a gory glow to it. I gag.
I crouch behind the car, dry-heaving, waiting for the sirens, waiting for my life to change. Finally, in the quiet, I peer around the fender, up the steep ditch in front of me. No other car in sight. No one has pulled over. There is nothing. A curse or a miracle. One dark minivan drives by, and I wonder if the driver can see the ragged-looking girl on the side of the road. But the car keeps going, pulls up to the stop sign a couple hundred yards away, then heads off into the night. I am alone.
Is it sadness or relief, to have fucked up and not been seen? Is it shame or frustration, to not be found out? I go back to the car and find my phone. It, like all of my limbs, is still intact. The screen is full of missed texts from Colt: he’s leaving soon, Ben Folds is gone, I shouldn’t bother coming. I nearly laugh out loud. I’m tempted to call him, bitch him out or maybe ask for a ride, but he’d be too fucked up to do anything. And anyway, I know I need a real adult, not some millennial cosplaying as one. So I pull myself back over to the driver’s side door, as the rain turns to sleet, and I dial Izzy’s number.
I think of Julien as it rains. The pale rose of his lips as he purses them together, tearing wristbands across from me in the atrium of The Venue. His flannel that always seems to be on the arm of the couch in the office, the yellow plaid of it clashing with the chartreuse, smelling like yeast. Citrus. The sound of his sneakers squeaking on linoleum, on hardwood, on the slick tile behind the bar—the soundtrack to every night before doors open. His fingertips drumming against the vinyl stool, trickling up the denim of my jeans on my roof. His throat clearing as he unlocks doors before a show, the back of his teeth minty against my tongue.
Izzy doesn’t answer the first time. I try again. The ringing is like a taunting synth note in the key of D. I hate it. I hang up and text her that I’ve been in a wreck—I’m okay—but is she around? Above me, at the edge of the ditch, tires rush through the rain on the street. The car must not be visible from the street; my headlights are off. Izzy’s phone rings and rings.
Songs for the rain, when people aren’t answering their phones:
“A Lack of Color” (Death Cab for Cutie)
“No Rain” (Blind Melon)
“Nightswimming” (R.E.M.)
“3rd Planet” (Modest Mouse)
“Champagne Supernova” (Matt Pond PA, covering Oasis)
“Look at Miss Ohio” (Gillian Welch)
“Too Stoned to Cry” (Andrew Combs)
“Daughters of the Soho Riots” (the National)
“MFEO—Pt. 1 Made for Each Other, Pt. 2: You Can Breathe” (Jack’s Mannequin)
“Never Meant to Love You” (Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons)
Julien answers on the second ring. Before I can even tell him what’s happened, he asks if I’m okay. His voice is measured and quiet and calm, like maybe he’s whispering in the back of a movie theater.
Less than fifteen minutes later, a pair of headlights peeks through the dark mist. In the minute it takes him to park the car and make his way into the ditch, I’m consumed by how much I hate myself, by how little I deserve this small act of grace.
He folds me into a hug, and I fight the urge to cry, though there’s a nagging ache in my throat that’s threatening to break.
—Are you okay? he asks.
—I’m sorry, I say.
—What? You don’t have to apologize.
He thinks I’m talking about the crash, the deer, the calling him up and ruining his night, but I’m talking about all of it. Us, Nick, fucking Colt—all my flaky back-and-forth. I’ve been selfish. I’ve taken advantage of his kindness, his listening ear, his whatever—and now he’s here.
—For everything, I say.
—Stop, he says.
—I’ve just—
—I’m calling Triple A.
I nod. Useless.
—I’m glad you’re okay, he says.
—Thank you, I say. For being—for picking up.
He pulls me into another hug, and it’s only then, through the moonlight, that I see the brutal truth of what has happened. The impact had been so loud, the moment had passed so quickly, that I couldn’t see that it wasn’t a deer at all. It was a dog.